October 23, 2016

Srinivasa Ramanujan: Encounter with the Infinite

How Did the Minimally Trained, Isolated Srinivasa
Ramanujan, with Little More than an Out-of-Date Elementary Textbook,
Anticipate Some of the Deepest Theoretical Problems of
Mathematics—Including Concepts Discovered Only after His Death?

....
Hardy realizes that Ramanujan’s formulae, so weird yet elegant,
supercharged with meaning yet concise, “must be true because, if they
were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them.” So
disturbed is Hardy by the genius evident in Ramanujan’s letter that he
sends an emissary to the edge of the empire, to India, to bring
Ramanujan back to the imperial capital.

At Cambridge, Ramanujan is friendly and funny, easy company, but
weird mathematics gushes out of him. He can’t explain the reasoning that
leads to his formulae, nor their significance. He seems otherworldly to
Hardy, as easy and dexterous with infinite quantities as with a knife
and fork. With his intellect finally being fed by a university,
Ramanujan’s genius erupts into something never before seen.

.... Then he returns to India, expecting to die. As his last act,
he produces the strangest work of his career: a series of mathematical
formulae only recently understood. We now know that they grant the
bearer passage to the infinite.